"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again".

Early 20th century ornithologist and naturalist, Charles "William Beebe", The Bird: Its Form and Function (1906).

Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!"In the winter they're silent—the wind is so strong;What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song.But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,And singing, and loving—all come back together.But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,The green fields below him, the blue sky above,That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—"I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"

The bird is my neighbour, a whimsical fellow and dim;There is in the lake a nobility falling on him.The bird is a noble, he turns to the sky for a theme,And the ripples are thoughts coming out to the edge of a dream.The bird is both ancient and excellent, sober and wise,But he never could spend all the love that is sent for his eyes.He bleats no instruction, he is not an arrogant drummer;His gown is simplicity - blue as the smoke of the summer.How patient he is as he puts out his wings for the blue!His eyes are as old as the twilight, and calm as the dew.The bird is my neighbour, he leaves not a claim for a sigh,He moves as the guest of the sunlight - he roams in the sky.The bird is a noble, he turns to the sky for a theme,And the ripples are thoughts coming out to the edge of a dream.

The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor. Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds.

Mark Norell, as quoted in American Museum of Natural History "Velociraptor had feathers" ScienceDaily (September 20, 2007)

If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs.

When it was assumed that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, it was correspondingly presumed that their flight evolved among climbers that first glided and then developed powered flight. This has the advantage that we know that arboreal animals can evolve powered flight with the aid of gravity, as per bats. When it was realized that birds descended from deinonychosaurs, many researchers switched to the hypothesis that running dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up. This has the disadvantage that it is not certain whether it is practical for tetrapod flight to evolve among ground runners working against gravity.The characteristics of birds indicate that they evolved from dinosaurs that had first evolved as bipedal runners, and then evolved into long armed climbers. If the ancestors of birds had been entirely arboreal, then they should be semiquadrupedal forms whose sprawling legs were integrated into the main airfoil, like bats. That birds are bipeds whose erect legs are separate from the wings indicates that their ancestors evolved to run.

Imagine, if you will, a world filled with billions of dinosaurs. A world where they can be found in thousands of shapes, sizes, colours and classes in every habitable pocket of the planet. Imagine them from the desert dunes of the Sahara to the frozen rim of the Antarctic Circle - and from the balmy islands of the South Pacific to the high flanks of the Himalayas. The thing is, you don't have to imagine very hard. In fact, wherever you live, you can probably step outside and look up into the trees and skies to find them. For the dinosaurs are the birds and they are all around you. Dinosaurs didn't die out when an asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago. Everything you were told as a child was wrong.

From nesting, brooding and sex, to metabolism, development and even the diseases that afflicted them, many of the traits found in birds today were inherited from the dinosaurs. The boundary between dinosaurs and birds has become utterly blurred.

Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs.

Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taughtThe dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought?Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!

Up and down! Up and down!From the base of the wave to the billow's crown;And amidst the flashing and feathery foamThe Stormy Petrel finds a home,—A home, if such a place may be,For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,And only seeketh her rocky lairTo warm her young and to teach them springAt once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!

O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides,White as the moon is when the night abides,Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glowsBright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throwsA glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.

And a good south wind sprung up behind, The Albatross did follow,And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo!"God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends that plague thee thus!—Why look'st thou so?"—"With my cross-bow I shot the Albatross."

Great albatross!—the meanest birds Spring up and flit away,While thou must toil to gain a flight, And spread those pinions grey;But when they once are fairly poised, Far o'er each chirping thingThou sailest wide to other lands, E'en sleeping on the wing.

Those golden birds that, in the spice-time, dropAbout the gardens, drunk with that sweet foodWhose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer flood;And those that under Araby's soft sunBuild their high nests of budding cinnamon.

Thou should'st be carolling thy Maker's praise,Poor bird! now fetter'd, and here set to draw,With graceless toil of beak and added claw,The meagre food that scarce thy want allays!And this—to gratify the gloating gazeOf fools, who value Nature not a straw,But know to prize the infraction of her lawAnd hard perversion of her creatures' ways!Thee the wild woods await, in leaves attired,Where notes of liquid utterance should engageThy bill, that now with pain scant forage earns.

Julian Fane, Poems, Second Edition, with Additional Poems, To a Canary Bird; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 89.

Sing away, ay, sing away, Merry little bird Always gayest of the gay, Though a woodland roundelay You ne'er sung nor heard;Though your life from youth to agePasses in a narrow cage.

Dinah Craik, The Canary in his Cage; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 89.

Bird of the amber beak,Bird of the golden wing!Thy dower is thy carolling;Thou hast not far to seekThy bread, nor needest wineTo make thy utterance divine;Thou art canopied and clothedAnd unto Song betrothed.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.

The Jackdaw sat in the Cardinal's chair!Bishop and Abbot and Prior were there, Many a monk and many a friar, Many a knight and many a squire,With a great many more of lesser degree,—In sooth a goodly company;And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, Was a prouder seen,Read of in books or dreamt of in dreams,Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims.

An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chestfull, and makes no more use of them than I do."

I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. ~ Harper Lee

"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water,Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroadIn such an ecstasy!Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:

Like as a feareful partridge, that is fleddFrom the sharpe hauke which her attacked neare,And falls to ground to seeke for succor theare,Whereas the hungry spaniells she does spye,With greedy jawes her ready for to teare.

Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I;And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry,The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,As up and down the beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I.

Tell me not of joy: there's noneNow my little sparrow's gone; He, just as you, Would toy and woo,He would chirp and flatter me, He would hang the wing awhile, Till at length he saw me smile,Lord! how sullen he would be!

William Cartwright, Lesbia and the Sparrow; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 740.

The sparrows chirped as if they still were proudTheir race in Holy Writ should mentioned be.

So little cause for carolingsOf such ecstatic soundWas written on terrestrial thingsAfar or nigh around,That I could think there trembled throughHis happy good-night airSome blessed Hope, whereof he knewAnd I was unaware.

Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull. He is rather the handsomest of the blue-mantled Laridae, for the depth of color in the mantle, in sharp contrast with the snowy plumage of back and breast, gives him an appearance of sturdiness and quality which is not easily dispelled by subsequent knowledge of the black heart within. As a scavanger, the Western Gull is impeccable. Wielding the besom of hunger, he and his kind sweep the beaches clean and purge the water-front of all pollution. But a scavanger is not necessarily a good citizen. Call him a ghoul, rather, for the Western Gull is cruel of beak and bottomless of maw. Pity, with him, is a thing unknown; and when one of their own comrades dies, these feathered jackals fall upon him without compunction, a veritable Leichnamveranderungsgebrauchsgesellschaft. If he thus mistreats his own kind, be assured that this gull asks only two questions of any other living thing: First, "Am I hungry?" (Ans., "Yes.") Second, "Can I get away with it?" (Ans., "I'll try.")